Thailand - An Update on our First Few Days

Hi, everyone! I thought I'd give a keep recap of what our first few days have been like here. I have good internet here and figured I'd should take advantage of it. 

our flights over  |  Our flights over went great. The flights and layovers were the best ones yet and I'm positive it's because you all prayed for us - thanks! 

prison visits  |  We arrived to our friends home around 11:30pm and were up and ready to go by 7:30am the next morning for our prison visit.

We throughly enjoyed visiting the prison. The visits are monthly and it is basically a church service. There were about 200 women and many of them have become Christians. They sang louder than any church I have been in (with the exception of The Brooklyn Tabernacle). Dave and I both shared our testimonies and other people on our team shared testimonies and verses as well. They had me pray over the women who have a life-long sentence or who are on death row and humbled isn't even a fitting word for that. A lot of the women have a life sentence or are on death row for having over 1K of drugs. They can have their sentence reduced at times so that is good. 

After the service was over we got to visit with many of the women. They knew we spoke Portuguese and Spanish and we got to talk and pray with several of the women. One lady was from Mozambique, a Portuguese speaking country in Africa. Two other women spoke Spanish and it was nice to be able to listen to them and pray for them. 

We are hoping to be able to coordinate some of our visa renewal times during the first of the month so we can go along with our friends to visit these women again. 

Thursday and Friday Dave went to the men's prison as well. He said it went well and he got to visit and answer many questions that the men had. 

Please keep these prisoners in your prayers. Pray that God would continue to save many of them and for the ones who are saved, please pray that they will be a light to others. 

rest  |  We have been resting a lot. Jet lag wasn't as bad as it normally is, again, I'm positive it's because of prayer. I have come down with a cold but a lot of rest is helping me get back on track. 

visiting with friends  |  We have loved staying with our missionary friends here. They have a large house and always have something going on whether it is English classes, Bible classes, or having people stay with them. We have been able to meet a lot of people and at lunch someone pointed out that we had 5 languages being spoken at the table: English, Thai, Philippine, Pakistani and Myanmar. It's been neat to spend time with so many believers from all over the globe. 

a festival  |  Our missionary friends had someone take us to a festival. It was quiet interesting and honestly more packed with people than any place or festival I have ever been too. I thought Korea was packed but man, Thailand - you showed us what packed really is! 

First off, here is a picture of the traffic on the way there. Our missionary friends here have a driver and he does an excellent job. 

Here is what I mean by tons and tons of people. Also, this is before the 'crowded' part and I'm not kidding.

The festival is a Buddhist festival where everyone purchases a floating arrangement made from banana leaves and flowers. They confess their sins and place the arrangement in the water. This is supposed to take their sins away. 

After purchasing a flower arrangement they have several options on how to get them into the river. They could get in a long boat which held about 4-6 people.

They could get in this big boat which held a hundred to two hundred people. 

Or for the third option they could just smash in with thousands of other people to confess their sins and place their floating arrangement in the water.

After placing the arrangement in the water there were three people to push the arrangement out. One was this guy standing here. One was a kid on the side. The third kid was in the water pushing away all the candle lit arrangements so the wooden dock wouldn't catch fire. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw that little boy in there. Can you see him?

They also had a lot of other items for sale: balloons, food, live fish and turtles in plastic bags and lots of other knick knacks and toys to purchase. Oh and they had a beauty pageant as well as a group of men playing basketball via 'hackie sack style. It was really entertaining to see. 

As you can tell, the Thai people need Jesus. Please keep praying that many of them will get saved.

Burma  |  Tomorrow we leave for Burma. We should arrive there around 2pm. We are excited to get over there and start helping.

Thanks again for all the prayer and encouragement as we are making our transition over here. We couldn't do it without all of the support.